Sarin

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Thursday raised pressure on Russia to help resolve the crisis in Syria, forcefully rejecting Moscow's claim that Syrian rebels were behind last month's chemical weapons attack in several Damascus suburbs. Ahead of a much anticipated meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week, Kerry said a report by U.N. weapons inspectors released this week showed “unequivocally” that deadly sarin nerve gas was used in the attack, and that only President Bashar Assad's government could have been responsible.

BEIRUT - A United Nations report released Thursday concluded that chemical weapons probably were deployed on several occasions in Syria, the most convincing evidence coming from the Aug. 21 attacks outside Damascus that left hundreds dead. Chemical weapons may have been deployed in five of seven cases investigated, occurring between March and August, including the Aug. 21 incident, according to the report. The five locations were Ghouta, Khan Assal, Jobar, Saraqeb and Ashrafiah Sahnaya.

September 1, 2013 | By Michael A. Memoli, This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

WASHINGTON -- The United States now has evidence that sarin gas was used in the chemical weapons attack against innocent Syrian civilians, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Sunday. The new evidence adds to the case that the Obama administration will make to Congress for taking military action against Bashar Assad's regime, one that they are confident lawmakers will heed, Kerry said. "I don't believe that my former colleagues in the United States Senate and the House will turn their backs on all of our interests, on the credibility of our country, on the norm with respect to the enforcement of the prohibition against the use of chemical weapons," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press," one of several interviews he was to sit for less than 24 hours after President Obama's surprise decision to seek a congressional vote on a military strike against the Syrian government.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Thursday raised pressure on Russia to help resolve the crisis in Syria, forcefully rejecting Moscow's claim that Syrian rebels were behind last month's chemical weapons attack in several Damascus suburbs. Ahead of a much anticipated meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week, Kerry said a report by U.N. weapons inspectors released this week showed “unequivocally” that deadly sarin nerve gas was used in the attack, and that only President Bashar Assad's government could have been responsible.

A Korean-American businessman was arrested in Newark, N. J., on charges of trying to illegally buy and export deadly quarter-ton nerve-gas bombs and an array of other weapons, some of which may have been meant for sale to Iran. Juwhan Yun, the 48-year-old president of Komex International Corp. in Short Hills, N. J., was accused of having negotiated with an undercover U.S. Customs Service agent to ship bombs containing a lethal gas known as Sarin.

BEIRUT - A United Nations report released Thursday concluded that chemical weapons probably were deployed on several occasions in Syria, the most convincing evidence coming from the Aug. 21 attacks outside Damascus that left hundreds dead. Chemical weapons may have been deployed in five of seven cases investigated, occurring between March and August, including the Aug. 21 incident, according to the report. The five locations were Ghouta, Khan Assal, Jobar, Saraqeb and Ashrafiah Sahnaya.

Behind armed guards in bulletproof booths deep in the Kentucky woods, workers have begun pouring the foundations for a $3-billion complex designed to destroy America's last stockpile of deadly chemical weapons. The aging arsenal at the Blue Grass Army Depot contains 523 tons of liquid VX and sarin -- lethal nerve agents produced during the Cold War -- and mustard, a blister agent that caused horrific casualties in World War I. The Obama administration has pushed to speed up the disposal operation after decades of delay, skyrocketing costs and daunting technical problems.

An incinerator operator got the go-ahead from the state Environmental Quality Commission to start destroying part of the nation's stockpile of Cold War-era chemical weapons. Rockets loaded with the nerve agent GB sarin are scheduled to be removed from a storage igloo at the Umatilla Chemical Depot outside Hermiston beginning Wednesday and destroyed in the adjoining incinerator, U.S. Army spokeswoman Mary Binder said.

Re "U.S. verifies Syria's use of sarin," June 14 Red line? Are you kidding? Why is it less moral for Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces to kill rebels and civilians by asphyxiating them using sarin gas than it is for them to blow off limbs or faces or send bullets into people's torsos? The moral red line was crossed long ago; the sarin red line is about the politics associated with the risks of arming the enemies of our enemy and the risks of involvement in another Mideast war. The debate should always have been about this; instead, it's embroiled in a heated struggle to decide what, if anything, to do about the declared-to-be-crossed red line.

Japanese police found evidence of sarin gas at a building owned by a religious cult Friday, in a major breakthrough in the investigation of nerve gas attacks on Tokyo's subways last month, media reports said. Investigators found a chemical that can only be created when sarin decomposes in a laboratory belonging to the Aum Supreme Truth sect, NHK television and the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. NHK said the find proved that sarin had been present at the facility.

A United Nations report concluding that chemical weapons were used in Syria on Aug. 21 contains evidence pointing to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces as the perpetrators, the U.S. and British ambassadors to the world body said Monday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declined to say whether rocket fragments and other physical evidence collected from a Damascus suburban area by U.N. investigators made it clear whether it was the Assad regime or the rebels fighting him who launched the sarin gas attacks.

September 1, 2013 | By Michael A. Memoli, This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

WASHINGTON -- The United States now has evidence that sarin gas was used in the chemical weapons attack against innocent Syrian civilians, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Sunday. The new evidence adds to the case that the Obama administration will make to Congress for taking military action against Bashar Assad's regime, one that they are confident lawmakers will heed, Kerry said. "I don't believe that my former colleagues in the United States Senate and the House will turn their backs on all of our interests, on the credibility of our country, on the norm with respect to the enforcement of the prohibition against the use of chemical weapons," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press," one of several interviews he was to sit for less than 24 hours after President Obama's surprise decision to seek a congressional vote on a military strike against the Syrian government.

By editing out one key word from an interview, hotshot producer Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater) damages ACN's journalistic credibility -- and exposes the cable network to staggering legal expenses -- on “One Step Too Many,” Episode 16 of HBO's “The Newsroom.” Jerry has visions of winning a Peabody Award as he probes Operation Genoa, a Special Forces rescue of two Marines in Pakistan. If a tip Jerry received is true -- that the U.S. sprayed a village with lethal sarin gas -- high-ranking officials could go to prison.

Re "U.S. verifies Syria's use of sarin," June 14 Red line? Are you kidding? Why is it less moral for Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces to kill rebels and civilians by asphyxiating them using sarin gas than it is for them to blow off limbs or faces or send bullets into people's torsos? The moral red line was crossed long ago; the sarin red line is about the politics associated with the risks of arming the enemies of our enemy and the risks of involvement in another Mideast war. The debate should always have been about this; instead, it's embroiled in a heated struggle to decide what, if anything, to do about the declared-to-be-crossed red line.

June 13, 2013 | By Paul Richter and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - The White House declared Thursday that Syria had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons in that country's civil war, and in response, U.S. officials said, President Obama had authorized sending arms to some rebel groups. The arms will be provided to the rebel Supreme Military Council, an official said. The council is the military arm of an umbrella group that represents more moderate factions of the forces arrayed against the government of President Bashar Assad.

May 6, 2013 | By Patrick J. McDonnell, This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

BEIRUT - A leading member of a United Nations investigatory commission says there are “strong concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that Syrian rebels have used the nerve agent sarin. Carla del Ponte, a former prosecutor for U.N. tribunals investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, made the comment in an interview Sunday with a Swiss television channel, the BBC reported . The U.N. panel, known as the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, emphasized in a statement Monday that it had reached no conclusions about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war. “I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got ... about the use of nerve gas by the opposition,” Del Ponte told Swiss Italian broadcaster RSI. She said the evidence emerged from interviews conducted by investigators with victims, physicians and others in neighboring countries.

Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of sarin, a nerve gas that Saddam Hussein produced in the 1980s, in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, two officials said Tuesday. The determination, made by a U.S. laboratory that the officials would not identify, verified that the bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the deadly nerve agent on the battlefield, the two said, speaking anonymously.

CNN chief executive Tom Johnson told colleagues Monday that he had twice submitted his resignation because of the nerve gas story that the network had to retract, but was rebuffed each time by CNN founder Ted Turner. Johnson also told his staff in a conference call that he is taking another look at possible punishment for Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent on the story, according to several participants in the call.

April 26, 2013 | By Paul Richter, Ken Dilanian and David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agree that Syrians have been exposed to deadly sarin gas in recent weeks, but they are divided over how certain they can be that the Syrian regime is to blame, U.S. and congressional officials said Friday. As the Obama administration weighs how to respond to the use of poison gas, intelligence officials say they are confident that sophisticated tests of tissue and soil samples and other evidence point to sarin. But reactions in the U.S. intelligence community have varied because of the possibility - however small - that the exposure was accidental or caused by rebel fighters or others outside the Syrian government's control, officials said.

April 25, 2013 | By David S. Cloud and Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - The White House said for the first time that there was evidence Syria had used chemical weapons in its civil war, but administration officials called for a broader United Nations investigation and edged away from declaring Damascus had crossed a "red line" that might trigger U.S. intervention. According to a White House letter to Congress, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed "with varying degrees of confidence" that President Bashar Assad's forces had used small amounts of sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent banned by international treaty.